Project 2012: Day 37

So you’re looking for your dream job, or the next one anyway. You are, as they say, Job Hunting…

…Yet when I speak to people about how it’s going, or what they’re doing, I get the following answers:

“Well, I’ve submitted my CV, and I’m still waiting for the recruiter to call.”

“Had a great chat with the recruiter, but the company is slow in getting back to them.”

“I’ve downloaded 15 jobs to the [website] profile, and have sent an application in to each. I expect to hear any day now.”

Clearly, none of these people have been hunting. Or farming for that matter. Trapping perhaps.

Y’see, there is a distinct lack of action in any of the above statements. If you’re hunting, you’re active. Yes, yes, there are times when you wait in stealth for your quarry. But never without action in the first place.

If you want to land your next job, be proactive on the communication. Some techniques:

1. Always endeavour to get the email/phone details of the hiring manager, and their PA.
2. Whenever you’re talking to recruiters (corporate or agency) never simply accept “we’ll call you.” Politely suggest a couple of good times that could be “mutually convenient.”
   Agency: “Thanks for your interest, I’ll contact the hiring manager, and get back to you”
   You: “That’s great, I’m keen to progress this, Friday afternoon or Monday morning I should be available for a chat, and I can probably arrange time for an interview next week. When would it be good for you to let me know?”
3. If they don’t call you by the agreed time, call them!

Yes, you don’t want to be a pest. And yes, you don’t want to continue flogging a dead horse. Sometimes you do have to wait. That’s fine, all I’m suggesting is that you quantify the real reasons, and length of time you can expect to wait, and you manage the communication.

If you’re running a number of job prospects, with a number of contacts for each one, you’ll need to have some system in place to track the activities. So that when Wayne phones about the Airline, you don’t confuse him with Bob about the bank.

But everyday, you should have at least one active task for every job prospect you’re chasing.

More on that, next week.

Project 2012: Day 36

True Story: Back in 1998 shortly before moving to Australia, we had our first Christmas as a family rather than at either of Lucy or my parents’ place. As we were starting a new family tradition, we put to the children that for Christmas Day we would devise a menu of our favourite dishes.

Needless to say, we had various gourmet pizza’s for our mains. But for dessert, we had the following, scrumptious, easy, freezer pudding. The Frozen Mess.

Ingredients:

• 1 box (10) small meringue nests
• 250ml thickened cream
• 1l Sorbet (Mango works really well)

Method:

• Get the sorbet from the freezer to thaw slightly whilst assembling the dessert
• Whip the cream until peaky
• Hand crush the meringue nests
• Mix the cream and crushed meringue nests together in a mixing bowl
• In a pie dish, smooth a layer of half the cream & meringue nests along the bottom
• Next smooth a layer of half the sorbet
• Smooth the rest of the cream & meringue nests
• Top off with the rest of the sorbet
• Pop into the freezer for at least an hour, but preferably overnight

To serve, remove from the freezer during the main course of the meal. Or just 10 mins before, to ease cutting into slices.

As you can see, another “easy as” desserts, and still a family (& guest) favourite.

Project 2012: Day 35

I had the ignominious pleasure of heading to my first boarding school at the tender age of seven. Pretty much the first chapter of Bryce Courteney’s “The Power of One,” was my personal experience. But as with all crappy experiences, they have a habit of teaching powerful lessons.

One of those I learned in the dining hall. When one is cooking for 1,000 people, it’s impossible to cater for tastes, especially when one has a budget to meet. This results in food that you, as pupil, just don’t like. But back in the 70’s, in rural South Africa, discipline was administered via corporal punishment. So you ate everything on your plate.

Furthermore, the rule at the table was” “Last one finished clears the plates.” Why we never put in a roster I’ll never know, but I do know that you ate! Everything, and very quickly. Any food left would brook a hiding, and dilly dallying meant clearing a table for 10.

So how does this relate to personal success. Simple. The lesson I learned to minimise any punishment, was to eat my worst foods first. Spinach, cabbage (over-boiled with lumpy mash), and brussel sprouts, all were the 1st things I ate. Ignore the taste, and know that your reward is the tastiest things on the plate: Roast chicken, potatoes, and peas.

It’s the same with your daily tasks. Do the ones you hate first, the admin, expenses, or resolving conflict. Then all you have to look forward to are the things you enjoy.

Project 2012: Day 34

As a CTO I’m passionate about a number of topics:

• How technology can empower people or businesses for success
• Technology trends and how these shape our world
• Influence, both at the macro and individual scale

This week I want to discuss complexity, how it informs, and shapes our IT strategy.

It never ceases to amaze me how really smart people can determine a strategy, even execute on this strategy, yet get it so wrong. And fail dismally. Often the plan put in place was “best practice.” Over the years I’ve come to observe a couple of things:

• There is no such thing as “best practice” (despite what consultants prosetylise)
• We see patterns that don’t exist
• Hence, most successes are half chance

Clearly I’m using hyperbole to make a point, but bear with me here.

It’s a given that any system has a myriad of moving parts. As humans our brain is wired to recognise patterns. The whole reason we lay down memories is to make sense of the overwhelming sensory inputs, and recognise patterns.

In fact the 6 principles of persuasion that Cialdini postulates [Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion], only work because we short-cut tedious decision making according to patterns we recognise.

So when it comes to “best practice” we see similarities between our organisation and say a competitor in the same industry, similarities in the systems we’re implementing, then seek to reduce cost or effort by following the same process. Over time implementers repeat these and create the “best practice.”

Yet, we can adopt the same strategy as another company, in the same geography, and still fail. Why is that?

Often this is an execution issue. Like a fat smoker, we opt for short-term benefits, a donut, rather than sticking to the strategy, the diet for the long-term results. But my experience is that this is less common than we believe. It strikes me that smart execs analyse trends, make smart decisions to implement good strategies, are committed to staying “on strategy,” yet still many fail.

As with any “best practice” the reasons given for failing are that the company hasn’t implemented the strategy correctly. But the strategies are wrong.

Two recent tech successes: Apple and Amazon – one heralded an entirely new way to access information, in an already crowded mobile market – the other redefined a 500 year old process, the published printed word, not to mention the way we will deliver computing, again in a crowded technology market.

Neither company adopted “best practice,” nor strategies their competitors held to.

Not the Same

When you consider the complexity of any organisation, the processes that make the business run, then the IT systems that support those processes, there is a lot less in common than meets the eye. Hence what we actually believe, and often act upon.

Of course, every parent knows this.

So the IT strategy for two banks of the same size, in the same geography, will of necessity be different. Even if they have the same IT platforms, they will have different networks, office buildings, cultures, resistance to change, governance processes, risk mitigation strategies. Why should we consider that integrating a complex system in both companies should be anything like the same?

So rather than seeking “best practice” I believe we should seek “adaptive strategy.” Whenever we’re confronted by people proposing that something is best practice, check their assumptions. Best practice for whom, compared to which other practices.

Random Points

There’s a great scene in the movie “A Beautiful Mind” about John Nash, the brilliant economist & Nobel Laureate, that shows how he saw patterns in newspapers, the stars, everything. Only, the patterns were random points connected in his mind alone.

I don’t believe there’s any getting away from recognising patterns in complexity. As I mentioned earlier, this is how we’re wired. As CTO’s it’s our job to understand complexity and define technical solutions to support and enable this.

Part of the challenge is that we see and fixate on patterns in too few dimensions. E.g. we appropriately recognise trends in technology, security & risk mitigation, but then miss patterns in governance, change management, corporate climate, and social trends.

Check Assumptions

So, I’ve argued that the patterns we see could well be random points, and not a pattern at all. That the similarities we cling to, in order to implement the best strategy, are superficial at best. And that nevertheless, it’s our role to implement a successful strategy.

I suggest a three pronged approach:

• Describe as much of the complexity as possible & never stop adding to your description. Use tools such as PESTLE, RACI, Root Cause Analysis, Visual & Mathematical Models, Intel’s BVI, and the 6 Thinking Hats to describe your business and IT systems as clearly as possible.
• Check your assumptions (& analysis) with as diverse a group of people as possible. I had lunch with a friend who happens to be the GM of a new client of ours last Sunday. His perspective is that the new helpdesk was “pretty ordinary” and in chatting to him, it turned out that the helpdesk had pretty much nailed their SLA’s, yet as a customer he still felt unhelped & dissatisfied. It was a humbling perspective for me, and invaluable feedback. So when you believe you have a handle on the complexity, go and talk to the HR Director, a new employee, and other stakeholders. Ensure that your team has diverse thinkers: Process types, Creatives, Analysts and Empathists.
• Be humble and adaptive, this is not cast in bronze. As you learn more about the complexity of the system, be prepared to hold on to old technologies you felt were outdated, adopt new ones you believed were immature, and iterate. Consider Borders, and more recently, Kodak, both companies that didn’t understand social impacts of changing trends, or couldn’t adapt their strategies to thrive.

It’s almost a given that as CIO or CTO, you will have deep knowledge, strong opinions, and a quick intellect. This almost a personality profile for the role. However, in an increasingly integrated and complex world, I suggest using the collective strength of the team to ensure your strategy is teh best one for your business.

Project 2012: Day 33

Today is a special day for a couple of reasons. Firstly it’s my daughter Em’s 22nd birthday. Awesome!

Secondly, this is the day that I come off my motorcycle P’s. My year of probation is up!!

So what does this have to do with Yoda, and Start-ups.

After over 2 decades of not riding motorbikes (after 6 years of riding) I decided to get back on two wheels. There are two approaches to getting this done:

1. Plan, prepare, analyse, save, train, and try your best
2. Do it.

From sitting the L’s exam, booking & and attending the 2 day L’s training, to buying my Scooter, was 3 weeks. That included selling my Nissan Navara 4WD.

And this is the same with everything, learning the drums, doing a degree, getting married, & starting a business.

As Yoda says:

“Try Not. Do, or do not! There is no try!”

Your best approach to getting the start-up running is to stop trying, stop analysing, and do it.

Doing it, committing to a launch forces you to consider the minimum technology you need, the 1st marketing campaign, your 1st ten customers. Once you have motion, you can change direction, but if you’re stuck in analysis paralysis, you’re just burning, not earning money!

Project 2012: Day 32

Answer to Day 25:

If you take a point on the circumference of a wheel that touches the road, it will go up in an arc, and down to a solitary point. I.e. unless it’s stationary, the point is moving upwards, forwards, and downwards.

However, if you extend the diameter of the wheel beyond the level of the road, the point that touches the road will do the same, but the point on the circumference that drops below the road will go backwards to go forwards.

What wheels have this attribute? Train wheels. So the a point on the circumference of a train wheel will go backwards to help the train move forwards.

Who’s with me?

Lucy, Em, and I have signed up for the inaugural Australian “1 Million Kilo Challenge.” This is all about pledging to lose weight over 10 weeks from the beginning of Feb. Over the country, the target total of weightloss pledged = 1,000,000 kg.

That’s a lot of butter.

To support those pledged, the organisers are providing diet and exercise plans. But I’m adding two characteristics that I know prove successful for me. Accountability and Competition.

So with a couple of friends we’ve created our own competition:
[Giving up] The Seven Deadly Sins of February. First person to pike takes the others out to dinner.

So what are these 7 mortal sins we’re forgoing to shed the tractor tyre?

1. Wrath – Alcohol (If you do have a drink you must donate $20 to your favourite charity)
2. Gluttony – Chips (hot and crisps)
3. Greed - Any added sugar
4. Pride - Any added salt
5. Acedia – Caffeine (coffee & tea)
6. Envy - Soda’s – diet or otherwise – sparkling water is the only carbonated drink allowed
7. Lust – Chocolate

I’ll be weighing myself and measuring my weight at the beginning of the month, then again on the 29th, and will post how successful this has been.

How about you? Feel free to join, not only for weightloss, but also for an overall reset for general health.

Project 2012: Day 31

We’ve reached the end of our first month in Project 2012! Wow – I’m quite chuffed that we’ve made it this far without faltering, and also at the ideas that keep coming for the rest of the year.

We’re going to talk about improving photos again today.

We take so many photos: At parties, birthdays, on holiday, even on the bus. Yet so many photos seem, well, boring.

Mostly the technique to change a boring capture of the moment, to a story-telling photo is framing. We chatted last week about camera angles for video, and this is certainly true for photos as well. Don’t take everything from eye level, but change your eye level to create interest.

Today we’ll talk about drawing the eye to your subject. There are a couple of techniques we need to discuss including: depth of field, the rule of thirds but let’s just focus on (pun intended) the subject for now.

Like a poorly told joke leads people to ask “what’s the point” an average photo elicits a “that’s nice” and a stifled yawn.

So when the camera (iPhone) is up to your eye, after you’ve thought about the best angle to take this shot from, ask yourself: “What’s the most important subject? The one thing I want to show with this photo?”

Now make that the leading subject in the photo. An example would be a shot of a child opening presents, you could have a shot of all the presents, paper, and child, or you could focus on just part of the child’s face as their eyes widen in surprise.

Don’t be afraid to zoom into just a part of the subject, or to use Depth of Field (in shooting or post) to focus on exactly what you want to highlight.

When you’re taking that sunset shot, is it the sun setting, or is your subject the reflected beauty of the landscape.

Always think about your subject.

Project 2012: Day 30

At a company I recently worked at, there was an email thread discussion about the value of CV’s. Most of the consultants (developers) were of the opinion that they’d never created, nor saw the need to use a CV. Good for them.

I say 2 things:

1. A CV is just one tool in helping establish credibility, and differentiating yourself from other candidates. It’s not the only tool, and you should use the most appropriate tool for your industry and career.
2. Use every tool you can.

One of the techniques that separates a good CV from a great one, is in the way you list achievements.

You certainly should detail your achievements. Definitely categorise them, so your Senior Life Saving Certificate isn’t muddled with your Salesman Platinum Club Award. Done that? Good!

But there is one subtle thing more that you can do, that changes the whole aspect of your CV:

Relate your achievements to business results. Relate them to outcomes that matter.

So: “Manager of the Year,” becomes:

“Team achieved 90% Customer Satisfaction to a target of 85%, which lead to Management Excellence Award”

Highlight the challenges you turned around, and opportunities you exploited, and do it in terms of business results.

Remember, everone, has achievements on their CV, make yours count! Less about you, more about how you add value.

Project 2012: Day 29

On 2 July 1994 a young man went round to a beautiful young lady’s house to cook her dinner. This was their first date. After a sumptuous meal, talking into the early hours of the morning of the 3rd, they decided to get married.

5 months later on 3 December they tied the knot, and here we are 17 years later. I was the young man, Lucy was my date that night, and this post is about the dessert I made, that had at least some contribution to our counter-intuitive commitment.

The Worlds Easiest Lemon Meringue Pie

I picked up the recipe from the side of a condensed milk can when I was 14, and this quickly became my “Pièce de résistance.”

Ingredients:

• 1 x Packet Tennis Biscuits (South Africa) these are best. Otherwise “Nice” biscuits (Australia) or “Digestives” (UK)
• 1 x Can condensed milk
• Juice of 2 x lemons – pure lemon juice also works, but doesn’t taste as good.
• 4 eggs
• Butter
• Caster sugar

Method:

• Preheat the oven on low – circa 90-120 Deg C
• Pop a healthy scoop of butter in a saucepan on the stove to melt
• Crumb the biscuits – I used to pop them in a plastic bag & use a rolling pin. Now I just bung them in a blender and pulse.
• Pop the biscuit crumbs in a pie tray (I used little individual ones for that first date), pour on the melted butter, and squish with a wooden spoon to make the base. Ensure this extends up the side of the pie tray.
• Pop the biscuit base(s) in the fridge
• Separate the eggs, mix the yolks with the condense milk, and whilst stirring slowly add the lemon juice. Keep tasting and adding lemon juice, until the mix is too sour for you (believe me, it will be sweet enough). Ensure you stir slowly so as not to curdle the mixture
• Pour the filling into the biscuit base(s) and pop back in the fridge
• Whisk the egg whites until they’re stiff and peaky, and start adding the caster sugar, keep whisking so the meringue is peaky, keep tasting and adding the sugar until the meringue is too sweet.
• Pop the meringue mixture on top of the filled base(s) and into the oven
• Cook on a low heat so the filling doesn’t curdle, until the meringue is golden brown
• Remove from the oven and leave on the side to cool. Once cool pop into the fridge until after dinner.

Nom!

Be very careful around eligible batchelor(ettes) as the results of this dessert speak for themselves.

Project 2012: Day 28

Here’s a common family scenario:

“Honey, will you hang the washing for me please?”

“Sure.”

Then later, when the washing is not hung out, an inevitable fight ensues. There’s an urban myth that the catalyst for most divorces is the argument that ensues from not taking out the garbage (who knew).

You find it almost impossible to pinpoint the source of the fight. If you do even remember being asked, which in the overwhelming information overload of the day, is perilous at best.

If you’re the one doing the asking though, you remember the interaction vividly.

The issue here isn’t the content of the request, or even the way it’s asked. Rather the implicit assumption that was overlooked. Let’s try it again:

“Honey, could you hang the washing for me in a minute (this morning, once you’re done etc) please?”

“Sure, as soon as I’ve finished reading the paper (watching this program, finishing this report etc)”

By respecting that your partner has an agenda of their own, and seeking to fit in with that, you’re far more likely to influence them and get the job done. Anything else is treating them as a subordinate.

Of course as the requestee you can help here too. Don’t just say “yes” but highlight that you’re doing something, and suggest a time that is good:

“Honey, will you hang the washing for me please?”

“Sure, when would you like me to do that? I’m just finishing this article, and need to run an errand.”

“When,” such a small word, but will save you a ton of grief.

Happy Wife, Happy Life

or to be a little more equitable

Happy Spouse, Happy House